WINDSOR – Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert was reelected to Congress on Tuesday, completing a political trapeze act in which she switched districts mid-election cycle during a period of intense personal turmoil and embarrassment.
Boebert was beating Democrat Trisha Calvarese with 53% of the vote to Calvarese’s 43% of the vote at 8:48 p.m. when Calvarese conceded.
The news wasn’t all bright for Boebert, however. She was vastly underperforming her GOP predecessors in the district, as well as other Republicans running for office in the 4th District this year.
Boebert currently represents the 3rd Congressional District on the other side of Colorado, but late last year she switched her reelection bid to the 4th District, which spans the Eastern Plains into Douglas County and Loveland, to improve her chances at securing a third term in Washington, D.C.
The 4th District – the most Republican of Colorado’s eight congressional districts in terms of voter registration and past results – provided a landing spot. The district’s last representative, Ken Buck, won each of his final two reelection bids by 24 percentage points.
Boebert was facing a difficult reelection bid in the 3rd District, where she won by just 546 votes in 2022. But her outlook dimmed further after she was ejected from a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” in Denver last year for talking loudly, vaping and engaging in mutual groping with a male companion. The episode, which she at first misled reporters about, was captured on surveillance cameras and broadcast far and wide.
The congresswoman, whose pending divorce was finalized in the weeks after the “Beetlejuice” incident, moved with her children to Windsor at the beginning of the year in search of a fresh start, politically and personally after the 4th District seat opened up upon Buck’s retirement.
Calvarese, a first-time candidate who previously worked as a speechwriter and congressional aide and campaign staffer, raised millions of dollars from Democratic donors across the country by invoking Boebert’s unpopularity. Calvarese tried to appeal to conservative voters in the 4th District by sticking to her liberal beliefs but trying to engage beyond partisan labels.
“We went with the messaging that the polls show we can win (with),” Calvarese said in an interview on the campaign trail last month. “We went with the message that we know swings voters.”
But the district’s GOP dominance proved too much of a hurdle.
Boebert’s strategy was twofold: prove to voters in the 4th District that she’s about more than the negative media attention she’s received, and talk about the issues that she thinks matter most to conservatives. She started talking to reporters more regularly, sitting for lengthy interviews with local and national outlets. She appeared open to criticism.
“My personal life has been an open book on the table. I don’t shy away from that,” she told The Sun in an interview early in the year.
After winning the six-way Republican primary in the district, Boebert appeared to cruise toward reelection.
In the 4th Congressional District, two super PACs spent $318,000 to oppose Boebert and help Calvarese. But national groups mostly stayed on the sidelines in the race with the expectation that Boebert would win.
Colorado Sun correspondent Sandra Fish contributed to this report.
